I'm a lean dog, a keen dog, a wild dog, and lone;
I'm a rough dog, a tough dog, hunting on my own;
I'm a bad dog, a mad dog, teasing silly sheep;
I love to sit and bay the moon, to keep fat souls from sleep.
I'll never be a lap dog, licking dirty feet,
A sleek dog, a meek dog, cringing for my meat,
Not for me the fireside, the well-filled plate,
But shut door, and sharp stone, and cuff and kick, and hate.
Not for me the other dogs, running by my side,
Some have run a short while, but none of them would bide.
O mine is still the lone trail, the hard trail, the best,
Wide wind, and wild stars, and hunger of the quest!
_Richard Aldington_
Richard Aldington was born in England in 1892, and educated at Dover
College and London University. His first poems were published in
England in 1909; _Images Old and New_ appeared in 1915. Aldington and
"H. D." (Hilda Doolittle, his American wife) are conceded to be two of
the foremost imagist poets; their sensitive, firm and clean-cut lines
put to shame their scores of imitators. Aldington's _War and Love_
(1918), from which "Prelude" is taken, is somewhat more regular in
pattern; the poems in this latter volume are less consciously artistic
but warmer and more humanly searching.